


Rules

by DeepBlueQL



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 04:43:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20058214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeepBlueQL/pseuds/DeepBlueQL
Summary: Mac calls and Stella comes.Mac/Stella with slight allusions to Peyton/Mac.Originally posted October 5, 2006.





	Rules

She sits up in the middle of the night, unsure what exactly woke her. Then she hears the tinny ring of her cell and grabs it off the nightstand. The caller ID reads “Mac” and she sighs, annoyed at whatever “urgent” case interrupted her rest. But when only the click of disconnection and ensuing dial tone greet her weary hello, she pulls herself out of bed and begins to get dressed; because this is urgent, and this isn’t about a case.

She gets to his door and doesn’t bother knocking, knowing it would be unlocked, because even if this is New York, Mac can more than hold his own against anyone looking for trouble in the seven minutes it took her to get here. The house is dark and silent, but she walks without stumbling to the kitchen where she finds him as she found him five years ago, sitting on the floor against the dishwasher. But this time the tears aren’t streaming down his face, flooding his hands; his back isn’t bowed, shaking with the percussion of loud sobs.

Instead, he’s staring straight ahead, looking at his fridge with unseeing eyes, breathing soundless shallow breaths. She sinks down next to him, neither touching nor speaking. Lifetimes pass and she feels her bones turn to stone as they sit, the green glowing display of time on his microwave having lost any meaning. When a voice breaks the quiet, noise has become so foreign she doesn’t realize at first it’s him who’s speaking.

“She’s gone. I saw her with someone else and now she’s gone,” he softly says without acknowledging her, as if addressing the appliances. Again, she chooses to remain silent. He finally turns to her, offering a tight smile and eyes that seem just a little too shiny.

“Thank you for coming,” he says, and suddenly she wants to stand and scream at him. She wants to ask where he was when she needed him. Demand why she should be here when he was never there. She wants to get up and run away, because the stupidest thing she ever did was agree to be this man’s savior. But she looks at him again and doesn’t yell, she doesn’t leave, she only wraps her arms around him, giving him her shoulder and letting him keep her heart. She holds him together as he cries into her hair, weighing down her curls with his tears.

Because there are rules to this relationship. In his rigid, formulaic approach to life, Stella may need Mac, but Mac will always need Stella more. And when she broke the rules and it came time for him to be her strength, to help her up, his damaged psyche couldn’t compute and he ran. 

He ran from her, from the hospital, to anywhere but there, to the crime scene, and eventually to Peyton. They will always be friends, and though she may want them to be more, for him to be more for her, for her to be more to him, she knows it’s against the rules.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
